was swallowing me up. I thought I was as
with a tempest driven away from God. About this time I did light on that
dreadful story of that miserable mortal, Francis Spira, a book that was
to my troubled spirit as salt when rubbed into a fresh wound; every groan
of that man with all the rest of his actions in his dolours, as his
tears, his prayers, his gnashing of teeth, his wringing of hands, was as
knives and daggers in my soul, especially that sentence of his was
frightful to me: "Man knows the beginning of sin, but who bounds the
issues thereof?"' We never read anything like Spira's experience and
_Grace Abounding_ and Giant Despair's dungeon in the books of our day.
And why not, do you think? Is there less sin among us modern men, or did
such writers as John Bunyan overdraw and exaggerate the sinfulness of
sin? Were they wrong in holding so fast as they did hold that death and
hell are the sure wages of sin? Has divine justice become less fearful
than it used to be to those who rush against it, or is it that we are so
much better men? Is our faith stronger and more victorious over doubt
and fear? Is it that our hope is better anchored? Whatever the reason
is, there can be no question but that we walk in a liberty that our
fathers did not always walk in. Whether or no our liberty is not
recklessness and licentiousness is another matter. Whether or no it
would be a better sign of us if we were better acquainted with doubt and
dejection and diffidence, and even despair, is a question it would only
do us good to put to ourselves. When we properly attend to these matters
we shall find out that, the holier a man is, the more liable he is to the
assaults of doubt and fear and even despair. We have whole psalms of
despair, so deep was David's sense of sin, so high were his views of
God's holiness and justice, and so full of diffidence was his wounded
heart. And David's Son, when our sin was laid upon Him, felt the curse
and the horror of His state so much that His sweat was in drops of blood,
and His cry in the darkness was that His God had forsaken Him. And when
our spirits are wounded with our sins, as the spirits of all God's great
saints have always been wounded, we too shall feel ourselves more at home
with David and with Asaph, with Spira even, and with Bunyan. Despair is
not good, but it is infinitely better than indifference. 'It is a common
saying,' says South, 'and an observation in divinity, that wher